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On Twitter, @GrammarGirl tweeted a link to a CollegeHumor video about a punctuation recession. It was a cute idea for a satire, but I found it a bit self-indulgent, and too far removed from reality. Believe me, there’s plenty of actual stuff happening in this economy worth satirizing.

Still, it reminded me of my favorite punctuation-related idea (besides National Punctuation Day or anything on Etsy featuring punctuation). I’d love to attempt this improv/Whose Line is it Anyway?-esque party idea. Who’s with me?

A Punctuation Party

A “writer” station at the door writes boldly on every party goer’s white T-Shirt a punctuation symbol. The person, no matter what his or her punctuation symbol, must act as it would in a sentence. For example, a person with…
-An exclamation point would be incredulous! At all times! Chug!
-A period would tell it how it is. Clear statements, no room for confusion. Period.
-With three periods would ramble on and trail off in every possible conversational activity. It would be their job to go on and on and on by telling fake stories, making noises, mumbling …
-A question mark would formulate everything in a questionable way? Both questions, but also questionable comments? Pick up lines?
-For those that the “writer” at the door deems capable, he or she should emblazon a colon, semicolon, or hyphen onto the unlucky partygoer. And don’t forget about the possibilities of Spanish symbols!

I’m sorry I can’t give credit or link to the URL where I found this, even after much googling. I know I found it on Sept. 25, 2008. If you can track down the site, please send it to me. Apologies to the creator(s) (whose work I did not edit so that it would be easier to find).

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As a high-tech editor, I usually adhere to Associated Press style, despite the fact that the AP Stylebook is a poor fit for technical language. I alluded to this two posts back, so I thought I’d elaborate.

I’m following many journalists on Twitter who are lamenting the continuing demise of the newspaper industry. There’s a lot of talk about how newspapers were slow to react to the Internet, digging their heels in and resisting change.

And this is how I feel about AP. It’s as if they have no idea how popular they are. They’re the Amazon of style guides and yet they refuse to even consider style issues that wouldn’t show up in newsprint.

Here’s a prime example. While at Texas Instruments, I tackled a controversy among communicators concerning the hyphenation of numbers and units of measurement.

Because the entries in the AP Stylebook were most unhelpful, I turned to its Ask the Editor column, which truthfully has saved me many times when someone asks about timeframe or time frame, or worksite or work site.

I thought very carefully about how to word my question. I had to think like a newspaper editor. Apple had just released the iPhone, so I thought about what the editors of a technology section might come across. I googled the iPhone specs and picked one to use as an example. The other example came from Texas Instruments.

Here’s my exact question and AP’s ridiculous non-answer answer:

Q: About your Aug. 30 answer re: spaces but no hyphens with numbers and measurement abbreviations, how would you treat 32 bit edge triggered D type flip-flop or 20 Hz frequency response (an iPhone spec)? The AP stylebook entry for kilobyte calls for no space (64KB, a 400KB file). Please standardize the treatment of numbers and measurements, both stand-alone and as modifiers. — from Dallas, Texas on Tue, Nov 06, 2007

A: Good suggestion to update the entries. In meantime, for easier reading, we’d advise against stacking the terminology.

What kind of answer is this? First, why does AP need me to prod them to update their entries? Second, what makes AP think that editors have a choice in “stacking” the terminology? If the flip-flop (and yes, this is an actual technical term referring to a two-state device used for data storage and transfer) has these characteristics and they’re all important, should editors begin haphazardly deleting them for the sake of easy reading? After all, engineers can’t decide what parts to buy unless they know the specs; otherwise the part might not work in their design.

The other thing that infuriates me about this response, of course, is the fact that the AP editor ignored the question. If the entire sentence read, “The new iPhone has a 20 Hz frequency response,” how is that stacking the terminology? Would it have been that difficult to say yes, use a hyphen, or no, it’s clear in this instance that hertz is modifying 20, not frequency, and therefore you don’t need a hyphen?

And this is why AP drives me crazy.

(By the way, I hyphenate numbers and units of measurement when they modify a noun, although I could be persuaded to eliminate hyphens and spaces completely.)

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I’ve noticed that WordPress is automatically converting double hyphens in my posts to em dashes, and I’m not happy.

At my last job (shoutout to all TIers), we had a quarterly meeting of the Writers Guild, where we took up just such controversies. Nothing makes me more riled up (think crazed football fan) than the opportunity to debate a style issue.

When “en or em” appeared on our agenda, we perused a very wide range of consumer and trade magazines to see if we could determine prevalent usage (naturally AP is no help on this one — thanks again for being so obstinate and antiquated, AP, but that’s another post for another time).

Usage was all over the place. Not only were some publications using em over en, some were giving each mark a space on either side and some weren’t. I found the em dash with no spaces particularly claustrophobic. If the point of using a dash is to ask the reader to pause (moreso than a comma, colon, or semicolon could), it would seem to me that crowding this long horizontal line between words on either side is counterintuitive.

TI’s Writers Guild decided to go with space-en-dash-space, and it’s been to my eye the “right” dash ever since. It’s long enough to be clearly distinctive from a hyphen and the spaces on either side help accentuate the visual interruption in the text.

An em-dash with spaces seems excessive and heavy-handed to me –  all nouveau riche and self-centered. So although I’ll put up with this automatic conversion to em dashes, at least you’ll know what I really think.

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Ah, the geekiest of holidays has arrived. It’s a time to remember that grammatically correct sentences do not just write themselves.

If, however, you aren’t quite able to discern when to use “these” and when to use “those,” or when an “all” needs an “of,” or why “no longer” really belongs after the “is,” never fear — I am here.

Lest you think I’ve imagined this holiday, here’s the Web site for National Grammar Day, brought to you by the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.

Personally, though, I’m privy to National Punctuation Day — only 204 more days to go!

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How long does it take you to stop saying “Dear” or “Hi” in the course of an e-mail exchange? And do you place a comma after the salutation but before the name, even though there’s another comma — blam! — right after the name?

I’m anti-post-salutation-comma and proud of it. My last boss not only used a comma after the salutation, she actually treated the salutation like a sentence and ended it with a period: Hi, Charmaine. It’s not incorrect — and I certainly got used to it — it’s just not what I learned back in typing class. (Yes, I learned about salutations in typing class, not English class. Didn’t you?)

But back to my first question. Liz Danzico (@bobulate on Twitter) did an informal survey of her inbox and calculated that it takes 3.5 e-mails for a responder to drop the salutation. Check out her fascinating post here.

Money quote:

A variety of salutations will likely be used over the course of an email correspondence, and their evolution reveals something about the developing relationship (or the perceived one) between the correspondents. Just as you wouldn’t ignore body language that indicates whether someone is intending to shake your hand or high-five you, nor should you ignore email-greeting intentions — no matter how well you know someone.

We instinctively sense the delay when sending postal mail and would never dream of composing an old-fashioned letter without a salutation. Conversely, the immediacy of e-mail makes formal salutations seem silly. You just said hello five minutes ago. Do you really need to do it again?

Isn’t it odd that we don’t have more choices for salutations? We could get around this awkwardness and say hello 10 different ways. Danzico’s post only mentions four: Dear, Hi, Hey, and Greetings. I’m lucky that, being a New Orleans native, I can also get away with “Hi y’all.” (By the way, that’s y’all, not ya’ll. I realize ya’ll is colloquial, but the contraction is for you all, not ya all.)

What we really need is some kind of shorthand for a response, a repondez s’il vous plait form of “back at ya.” According to Google Translate, the glorious Frenchy way of saying this is retour à vous.

So what should we do?  Start repeated e-mail exchanges with RAV?

I will if you will.

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